True Blood, coming to Channel 4 this spring, is the great new series from Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under.  Based on Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse mystery novels and set in a swampy Louisiana it mixes serial killers, voodoo and vampires.  The vamps have have come ‘out of the coffin’ and are the latest minority to be picked on by the Christian right. Whilst the Vampire Defence League proclaims their innocence, the truth is more complicated. 

Very bloody, pretty sexually explicit, but curiously still feeling like a mainstream drama the story revolves around Sookie, a hot pant wearing, telepathic, diner waitress and her love affair with a 173 year old vampire. It has a great supporting cast, spooky blues soundtrack and gets weirder the further into the series you get. The only slight let down is the vampires; they have terrible hair and are all a bit Fields of the Nephilim. A second series is already being made. 

Here is a link to the fantastic opening credits sequence. 

Mathew Clayton